On this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future Focus, host Brian McGlinon talks with Outlier Ventures Research Lead Jasper De Maere to discuss blockchain technology and artificial intelligence to address common issues such as security, privacy, and centralization. (AI) emphasized the need to integrate applications. Mr. De Meere pointed out vulnerabilities in the current state of the Internet (web2), particularly regarding data within his AI and his privacy and security practices. He advocated the synergistic potential of the combination of blockchain and AI and envisioned a better future Internet. Demer also delved into the challenges posed by AI-generated art and its impact on intellectual property (IP) rights. To address this, he proposed using blockchain as a transparent and immutable database to store IP information and ensure the integrity and authenticity of content generated by AI. Additionally, De Meere highlighted the role of blockchain in democratizing access to AI tools and facilitating the fair extraction of value from data by decentralizing storage infrastructure.
video transcript
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Brian McGleenon: Recently, exciting developments have occurred at the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology innovations. Now, I'm excited to have Jasper De Maere, research leader at Outlier Ventures, in the studio today to talk more about this. Jasper, welcome to this week's episode of his Yahoo Finance Future Focus.
Jasper de Mer: Hi Brian. Thank you for inviting me.
Brian McGleenon: Well, 2023 was a big year for the development of artificial intelligence. There was ChatGPT. There was Google Bird. Currently, these systems and applications seem to work well using a centralized infrastructure. Why does artificial intelligence need blockchain technology?
Jasper de Mer: Yes, that's right. In 2023, it all started with his 2022 backend and we saw generative AI capabilities in the hands of the masses. Today, billions of users use generative AI on a daily basis. And we're actually seeing meaningful effects on productivity at both the individual and work-related levels.
This is great, but I think the fact that these things are permeating society at large also shines a light on real problems. And the reality is that while AI is great, it also has some drawbacks. Some of the big issues here are questionable practices around data privacy and data security. For example, these are centrally stored databases from which the AI uses data extraction tools to generate the questions and queries we give.
And secondly, there is also the big question of democratizing access. Because if this is going to have a big impact on productivity, everyone needs to have access to these tools. And that's exactly where blockchain comes into play. Blockchain unlocks the ability to decentralize how data is stored, from which AI can pull data and extract value. Therefore, in the case of data privacy and data security, we believe that blockchain has the ability to enhance this in a transparent and immutable manner.
And from a democratization perspective, blockchain decentralizes the infrastructure used by AI. Again, decentralization, democratization, these are just a few examples of how blockchain can help. However, we fundamentally believe that the convergence of AI and blockchain is the direction of the future.
Brian McGleanon: One of the most concerning things about AI and its development is this kind of argument that generative AI is really, really sophisticated plagiarism. So how can blockchain protect, for example, artists’ works and intellectual property rights?
Jasper de Mer: Well, I think this is the number one concern for a lot of people. Because obviously we've seen generative AI emerging in terms of things like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other digital asset generation, generative AI capabilities coming online. Intellectual property protection is a top priority, right? It's on the radar of many artists in various fields.
How this is possible is by looking at blockchain as a database where all your IP is stored in a transparent and immutable way. So this becomes like a data point about who generated the asset, who is the owner, who was the previous owner. So all this metadata is preserved.
And ultimately, when you use gen AI to generate content, you can use this register to cross-check. You can match what's in your database in terms of actual assets and intellectual property. It may sound like a very trivial matter, but if you look at the current state of intellectual property, it is extremely fragmented. And many centralized and siled databases track intellectual property. So blockchain is just a very open infrastructure for storing all your IP, where you can cross-check the actual integrity, authenticity, etc. of assets.
Brian McGleanon: Is this why we really need Web3 instead of Web2?
Jasper de Mer: That's a very interesting question. This is because if you look at the state of the Internet and Web2 that we currently live in, there are several structural problems. There are issues when it comes to data privacy and security.
Bots are rampant. Centralization is progressing. Therefore, the combination of blockchain and AI could actually bring us to a better state of the internet.
Brian McGleanon: Jasper de Meere, thank you so much for coming again. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future Focus.
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